The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for retrospectively identifying an individual who had engaged in a commercial, retail or other transaction so that that individual can be later found in the future.
Law enforcement officials are often aided in the solving of crimes if they are able to trace items found at a crime scene back to the store or other establishment (the "vendor") where the item was purchased or rented. Once the vendor has been identified, it may be possible for the sales and/or transaction records and/or the recollection of the sales personnel to be used to retrospectively identify the person who made the transaction. For example, individuals allegedly involved in the recent bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City were able to be tracked down once the vehicle identification plate of the rental truck that had held the bomb was found in the debris. In another example, one of the alleged perpetrators of the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbee, Scotland was able to be traced by virtue of clothing found at the crash site which was a) identified as having been in one of the perpetrators' suitcases and b) traced back to the store from which the clothing was bought. Incredibly, the store clerk actually remembered the appearance and demeanor of the individual who had purchased those clothes many months earlier and this ultimately led to identification of the perpetrator.
Investigational success stories like these are, however, all too infrequent. Even assuming that officials are able to track an item or substance found at a crime scene back to the vendor, it is typically not possible to reliably identify the person who made a purchase. Cash transactions, for example, typically do not involve a disclosure by the purchaser of his/her identity to the vendor. Moreover, even where a name or address is requested as part of the transaction, it is generally possible for the purchaser to give false information--indeed possibly supplying stolen or counterfeit credentials in the process. Non-cash, e.g., credit card, transactions do result in a recordation of the credit card number, which can then be used to immediately identify the card holder's name and address from the card issuer's database. However, the credit card may well have been stolen from a bona fide, law abiding citizen. Of course, it might be possible that a sales clerk will remember something about a purchaser which can aid in his/her apprehension, as happened in the Lockerbee investigation. This will not, however, usually be the case--particularly when the item is sold in large volume to many purchasers in the course of a day.
It nonetheless remains the fact that as acts of lawlessness and terrorism continue to increase, public pressure for our governmental agencies to "do something" is also going to increase.
One way in which our officials might respond is to attempt to develop techniques which would allow them to more reliably identify purchasers and renters of items and substances found at crime scenes. For example, one proposal might be to issue so-called national identity cards for everyone in a society and require that card to be shown--and its number recorded--for every commercial and retail transaction. Indeed, such a card could include electronically encoded information relating to one or more physical characteristics of the person, e.g. a fingerprint or voice print, that could be used at the point of sale to verify that the person presenting the card is, indeed, the person to whom the card was issued.
There are, however, significant problems--both technological and sociological--with this approach. For example, the possibility of counterfeiting still remains. In fact, given the ever increasing technological sophistication of the world's criminal population, forgery of such cards would not only be possible, but inevitable. Moreover, the mere notion of such an identity card would be regarded as an undue and intolerable invasion of privacy by most Americans. People in this country continue to the value highly their right to remain anonymous to the maximum extent possible. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that even as we have seemingly resigned ourselves to the erosion of our privacy and anonymity due to the ever increasing proliferation of computers and databases, a countervailing trend has produced such privacy-protecting legislation and regulations as those which guarantee citizens the right to block their telephone numbers from being displayed on a called party's "caller ID" unit and which establish the right of a consumer to refuse to provide a merchant with his/her telephone number as part of a credit card transaction.
It will thus be appreciated that any attempt to more comprehensively and reliably record and/or memorialize the identity of persons engaging in commercial, retail and other transactions will, in order to be successful and accepted, have to address at least the above-described issues of a) counterfeit identifications, and b) individual privacy.